ESCHSCHOLTZIA 
cultivation. Poppies do well anywhere; but they do better in a 
gritty loam than in any other soil. The annual species are 
good border plants, but the perennials are best relegated to the wild 
garden or the plantation; in the latter situations they scarcely need more 
than an introduction, and they will become naturalised. The Shirley 
Poppies pay for good cultivation. The seeds should be sown in autumn 
on a bed or border of good well-manured soil. In early spring the seed¬ 
lings should be thinned to three inches apart. They all come freely 
from seed, which they produce in abundance—someone has calculated 
that a single capsule or poppy-head of P. somniferum contains about 
thirty-two thousand seeds. These should be thinly sown where desired, 
in March or April, and the young plants thinned out to a foot apart. The 
perennial species may also be propagated by taking up the parsnip-like 
root, and cutting it into transverse sections an inch long. These inserted 
in a pan of sandy loam and placed in a frame will all root and shoot. 
Explanation of The illustration shows a double form of P. somnifer'um. 
Plate is. To the left is a figure of the young capsule showing the 
low pyramidal stigmas; and the Fig. marked 1 represents the seeds 
of the natural size and greatly enlarged. Fig. 2 is a seedling. 
ESCHSCHOLTZIA 
Natural Order Papaveracejs. Genus Eschscholtzia 
Eschscholtzia (named after Dr. J. F. Eschscholtz, an eminent botanist, 
1793-1831). A genus of one or four hardy perennial herbs, smooth and 
glaucous, low-growing, much branched. The leaves are bi-pinnate and 
much divided into exceedingly slender segments. The flowers are similar 
to those of Papaver Rhoeas, though more cup-shaped and rich yellow. The 
sepals are joined in an extinguisher-like cap, which is thrown off by the 
opening flower. Receptacle fleshy with expanded margin. Petals, four, 
with the stamens attached to their base. Seed-capsule a two-valved 
silique, with the seeds attached to edges of valves. Native of North- 
West America only. 
As a garden-plant Eschscholtzia has a brief record. It 
HiSt0ry * is one of the many beautiful additions to the garden that 
we owe to David Douglas, the intrepid collector sent out by the 
Royal Horticultural Society to find new species suitable for culture. 
Eschscholtzia califomica was sent home in 1826, and has been in most 
British gardens ever since. In some it has responded so kindly to the 
